Long ago, deep in space, two massive black holes—the ultrastrong gravitational fields left behind by gigantic stars that collapsed to infinitesimal points—slowly drew together. The stellar ghosts spiraled ever closer, until, about 1.3 billion years ago, they whirled about each other at half the speed of light and finally merged. The collision sent a shudder through the universe: ripples in the fabric of space and time called gravitational waves. Five months ago, they washed past Earth. And, for the first time, physicists detected the waves, fulfilling a 4-decade quest and opening new eyes on the heavens.

LIGO researchers sensed a wave that stretched space making the entire Earth expand and contract by 1/100,000 of a nanometer, about the width of an atomic nucleus.

The oscillation emerged at a frequency of 35 cycles per second, or Hertz, and sped up to 250 Hz before disappearing 0.25 seconds later.

Comparison with computer simulations reveals that the wave came from two objects 29 and 36 times as massive as the sun spiraling to within 210 kilometers of each other before merging.

The collision produced an astounding, invisible explosion. Modeling shows that the final black hole totals 62 solar masses—3 solar masses less than the sum of the initial black holes. The missing mass vanished in gravitational radiation—a conversion of mass to energy that makes an atomic bomb look like a spark. “For a tenth of a second [the collision] shines brighter than all of the stars in all the galaxies,” Allen says. “But only in gravitational waves.”

“It will win a Nobel Prize,” says Marc Kamionkowski, a theorist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

We understand that an expansion-contraction of the Earth of the size of an atom nucleus diameter as an effect of a "ripple in the fabric of space-time" was detected during 0.25 seconds, and from this observation the conclusion is drawn by computer simulations and modelling that this extremely minute effect as a "ripple in the fabric of space-time", was the result of a very specific extremely gigantic invisible explosion 1.3 billion light years away shining brighter than all stars in all galaxies for 0.25 seconds in the form of gravitational waves.

We see a combination of a biggest possible cause/input and a smallest possible effect/output in a certain mathematical model. The conclusion comes from using this mathematical model in inverse form, where a smallest possible signal is used to identify a biggest possible origin of the signal.

This means that the mathematical model in inverse form is extremely ill-posed and as such cannot be used to draw conclusions. To do so requires that all alternative explanations of the zero signal can be eliminated, and it is then not enough to just say that no other explanation immediately suggest themselves, that is to draw conclusions from ignorance with the precision of the conclusions increasing as the ignorance or stupidity grows.

In Germany we launched on 13.07.2016 a petition in the wellknown petition platform change org, to set the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany under pressure, so that our 3 questions be answered to clarify the unbelievable accuracy at the LIGO experiment on the alleged detection of gravitational waves. We also translated the petition text into English under the german text, look at:

Prof. Karsten Danzmann, please answer 3 questions on the measurement of gravitational waves in connection with the LIGO Experiment

LIGO might just be the biggest science fraud in history.. They have the means (fame and money vs failing careers) and methods for inserting fake signals both through software and hardware, AKA blind injections <- pseudoscience

Their fraud will set any serious attempts of bringing together the fundamental forces back many years (Einsteins relativity is completely breaking any sensible axiom, e.g. causality) and destroy bright science careers.. so sad

I agree that there are lots of reasons to be skeptical of the whole LIGO enterprise. But I am similarly unimpressed by most skeptics because they tend only to quibble about matters of interpretation and fail to propose an empirical test that would--even to the satisfaction of the status quo--prove that the status quo has got it wrong.

Neither the status quo nor the skeptics and dissidents have proposed testing their theories under their noses, where they have not yet looked. Instead they tend to focus on some extreme regime of monetary expense, technological grandeur, and tiny, if even measurable effect.

In 1632 Galileo proposed a test of gravity that has not yet been done. It would be to realize the common textbook problem of dropping a test object into a hole through the center of a larger body. Being one of, if not the simplest conceivable gravity experiment, it may be characterized by the fact that the two bodies never collide; nor are they given any extraneous energy (such as to put one of them into a circular orbit). The apparatus may therefore be called a Small Low-Energy Non-Collider.

General Relativity is often touted as having been thoroughly tested on scales up to the size of the Solar System. In fact this is only true for that domain over the surfaces of the bodies involved. General Relativity's interior solution (derived by Schwarzschild in 1916) predicts that the rate of a clock at the center of the source mass is a minimum. Nobody has ever explained what the surrounding matter must do to make such clocks slow down.

I predict that the rate of the clock at the center is actually a maximum, which corresponds to a prediction for the falling test object that disagrees even with Newton's prediction. The test is doable in an Earthbased laboratory (with a modified Cavendish balance) or in an orbiting satellite.

Instead of quibbling about inconsequentialities or evidence dreamed about being found in some far off decimal point, why not carry on as responsible scientists by finishing the search for clues within our immediate reach? Clues that may have the weight of a big surprise in the first or zeroth decimal place? Why not urge those who have the resources to do so to build and operate humanity's very first Small Low-Energy Non-Collider?

ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES, (photons) colliding against charged particles, photoelectrical effect, of the plasma-jets HH which emerge from the black holes central galactic and new young stars in formation, protostars, forming in the jet "knots" more shining each a certain distance... GRAVITATIONAL WAVES (gravitophotons), unknown yet, come from the deep Universe since the beginning of the times. Is not a relativistic affaire "curvature" of that called "space-time".